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What do you tell men with low but detectable PSA who have completed ADT and RT?

Is a detectable PSA on ADT a harbinger of biochemical recurrence? Is there a threshold value above which you are concerned (ie. 1.0 vs 0.5 Ng/mL)? Is there any data to substantiate concern for values over a certain threshold?
1 Answer
Mednet Member
Radiation Oncology · Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School
Answered on

Several analysis have shown that patients who do not achieve undetectable PSA levels after 6 months of ADT have worse outcomes. This is a bit of a moving target and the definition of undetectable has changed over the decades.
An important question is - are these patients failing due to incomplete local control or do these patients harbor metastatic disease at presentation? I would argue that with modern doses of radiation we may have reached the goal of prostate radiation - to sterilize the prostate of cancer. The ASCEND-RT trial showed that maximizing dose with an LDR brachy boost, outcomes are improved. But this may be the limit of local therapy. I doubt we can squeeze out any much more with biological equivalent doses that were achieved ...

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